Instrumentation

18 vln.6 vla.6 vlc.4 db

Availability

Score 0-571-52204-1 on sale, parts for hire

Programme Notes

Jonny Greenwood (b 1971) Popcorn Superhet Receiver (2005) Commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and first performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra and Robert Ziegler on 23 April 2005 at LSO St Luke’s, London This was my first piece for the BBC Concert Orchestra, and it’s coloured by my childhood: as a kid, the family car only ever had the same four cassettes in it. These were: the songs of Simon and Garfunkel (though bizarrely not sung by them); Mozart’s horn concertos; and two musicals: Flower Drum Song and My Fair Lady. (This isn’t a claim of any kind of deprivation – there were other records at home – that’s just how things were.) On long journeys, when the family refused to hear them yet again, I used to listen to the engine noise, and found that if I concentrated hard enough I could hear the music from the cassettes still playing in the background. I’d do this for hours, until I could nearly hear every detail fighting to be heard through the drone of the car. And it was thoughts of background noise, and radios, that got me started writing this first BBC Concert Orchestra commission. © Jonny Greenwood

Popcorn Superhet Receiver

virtual online performance

Richard N Fisher Center for the Performing Arts (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA)

The Orchestra Now/James Bagwell

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Popcorn Superhet Receiver

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House (Sydney, NSW, Australia)

Orchestra of Opera Australia/Andrew Mogrelia

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Popcorn Superhet Receiver

first perf of revised version of Popcorn

Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz (Berlin, Germany)

all-stargaze orchestra/Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop/André de Ridder

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Popcorn Superhet Receiver

Centro Cultural Oscar Niemeyer (Goiânia, Brazil)

Orquestra Filarmonica da Goias/Neil Thomson

Popcorn Superhet Receiver

Logan Creative (Santa Ana, CA, USA)

Pacific Symphony Orchestra/Christopher Rountree